The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for destructively disposing waste without contaminating and polluting the environment. More particularly, the invention relates to waste processing by means of dry distilling (carbonization) and separating gaseous and solid products as resulting therefrom.
Waste disposal by means of just depositing the waste, letting it decay or burning the waste contaminates the environment in one form or another; solid, liquidous or gaseous decomposition products provide for pollution and other forms of contamination of the environment. Thus, a variety of waste products cannot or should not be processed in that manner because, for example, underground water will be contaminated and burning of some waste produces hydrochloric acid, sulfurous acid, hydrofluoric acid and other air pollutants.
In accordance with a known method, waste is dry-distilling, i.e. carbonized, and reduced to an ash-containing coke and the gas developed during the reduction is cleaned and used as combustion fuel and energy source for sustaining the carbonization. The fumes resulting from burning that gas do not pollute the air due to the prior cleaning. The known methods here, however, have the drawback that waste has usually a very low thermal conductivity, so that carbonization occurs only rather close to the oven chamber wall. Accordingly, the oven diameter must be quite small. In the case of using a relatively large oven, waste in the interior of the oven chamber will not be completely carbonized.